Teenager dies after being electrocuted by her iPhone charger while she slept

The dangers of knockoff phone chargers

A teenage girl who was sleeping next to a damaged iPhone charging cable has died after rolling over it and being electrocuted. Police from the Hoan Kiem district of Vietnamese capital Hanoi said a tear in the rubber casing might have revealed live wires that killed 14-year-old Le Thi Xoan.

It appears that Xoan regularly plugged in her iPhone 6 and slept next to the handset while it was charging. Her parents discovered she was unconscious and rushed the schoolgirl to the local hospital where they were unable to revive her. Medics confirmed electrocution as the cause of death.

As you can see from the photo above, the cable was damaged, and it appears someone had tried to repair it with some clear tape.

Authorities still haven’t confirmed if the cable was an official Apple product or part of a third-party knockoff, but given how much shorter it looks than one of Apple’s cables, it seems the latter option is most likely. Moreover, the tragedy was almost certainly due to a faulty USB power adaptor allowing the full mains voltage to travel through the cable.

Back in December last year, the UK Standards body revealed that 99 percent of fake Apple chargers sold were unsafe. They are often poorly built with inferior or missing parts, flawed designs, and inadequate electrical insulation.

In March, a coroner said Apple’s devices should come with warnings not to charge them in bathrooms after a man was electrocuted and died when his iPhone charger touched the bathwater he was lying in.

“[iPhones] seem like innocuous devices but they can be as dangerous as a hairdryer in a bathroom. They should carry warnings. I intend to write a report later to the makers of the phone,” said Dr. Sean Cummings.